


What's In A Mark

by shopfront



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Culture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Misunderstandings, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmarks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9311696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: Three assumptions made about Scotty and Jaylah's strange alien soulmarks.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outruntheavalanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/gifts).



> Contains some non-graphic reference to canonical trauma, death and violence Jaylah experiences, as well as some invented childhood ostracism.

_One thing everybody got wrong about Scotty's mark_

One of Scotty's earliest memories about his soulmark is a distant who-knows-how-many-times-removed Uncle examining his arm and chuckling. He wants to say it was Christmas, but to be honest he was too young to really remember. It could have been a reunion, or a wedding, or even a funeral for all he knew. 

Mostly he just recalls being ushered round a room full of tall strangers with scarily wide smiles. His parents had smiled back and ruffled his hair a lot, introducing him as "our son Montgomery, who wants to join Starfleet when he grows up."

"Oh he does, does he then," the Uncle had laughed along with them. "Aye, I wouldn't expect anything less from a young 'un with an alien mark like that. Judging from the look of it she'll be a right pretty one, too, whatever her species."

Scotty remembers squeezing the toy starship in his pocket hard and wanting to protest. He wasn't interested in any girl, or boy, he just wanted to play with a real life-sized ship for once. But his Mum had always had a finely tuned radar for his outbursts, and had taken one good look at his crumpling expression before whisking him away.

The older he had got, the less jolly and more leering the comments about his supposed exotic future spouse had become. Those leers had started to bother him more, too.

By the time he signed up to Starfleet, Scotty was just glad of an excuse to wear a a uniform most of the time. The more time he spent in his engineering classes, the more grateful he became that it not only covered his forearms but was specifically designed to withstand the wear and tear and weird substance spills from working with machinery, without making him hot and itchy. Mostly because it meant he didn't always have to push his sleeves out of the way while he worked, even in the Californian summer.

It was stupid, anyway. The shape wrapped around his arm wasn't pretty. They all saw the loops and assumed it meant feminine, maybe fragile or delicate, but definitely an emotive and compassionate species. An acceptable love match likely somewhat similar to any regular human mark. 

But Scotty had never wanted a love match. 

He thought it looked strong and solid. It was certainly easy on the eyes, but there was nothing delicate in its sheer size. It wrapped around one full forearm and curling up past the elbow to reach towards his shoulder. Nor was it pretty with its consistent, deep black colour and plentiful sharp edges and points among the gentler curves and sweeps.

He was sure whoever they were - whatever they were - they'd be much more than the sexy and exotic arm candy everyone implied, anyway.

 

 

 

_One thing everybody gets wrong about Jaylah's mark_

Jaylah was alone right from the start. 

Her friends had families who lived on planet. Even those that ran cargo like her parents didn't stray far and only used ships as small, temporary places to sleep when absolutely and strictly necessary. They always returned home as quickly as possible. Especially when they had children in tow.

Her friends also had big, long path marks that covered their limbs. Some they were born with, some were added in cosmetically as they grew, but they were all lengthy and wrapped around and around their bodies. They pointed them in all the ways they should go in life; the best choices and directions. 

Not like the path mark on Jaylah's leg.

She remembers pressing her face against a window on her first ever cargo run. Her breath was hard and fast in her chest from running from one side of the ship to the other, first to look down as they quickly left the planet behind and then to look out as the other ships ahead of them jumped to warp.

When Jaylah looks at the strange little isolated shape on her leg, she thinks it looks like the afterimage of those ships' engines flaring as they disappeared from view. A small, pointed burst of light, already further away than she can begin to comprehend.

Jaylah doesn't decide for a long time about whether she agrees with the jeers of her age mates, but she quickly stopped arguing with them. Her mark has no path, they are correct. It is alien in every way and she doesn't know how she will follow it either.

Jaylah has no path and no purpose. They cry out when she walks past that she is nothing and has no one, and she doesn't know how to prove them wrong.

 

 

 

_One wrong thing Scotty assumed about his mark_

Scotty might have cared more about disproving his engineering texts and inventing new contraptions than he did about finding his supposed one true love above all others, but he wasn't stupid. First chance he got after joining Starfleet he accessed the alien language and symbology databases and started poking around. He didn't think it would take long, just enough for a nice lengthy study break after spending all afternoon in the library. It was easy to pull up the identifying marks scan of his soulmark from his own student file and instruct the computer to find likely matches.

Then he remembers kicking back, shutting his eyes for a moment, and waiting.

It was a few hours later that Scotty fell sideways out of his chair, startled awake by his roommate stumbling through the door a little loud and clearly drunk. Scotty had rubbed his eyes and swore, just barely plucking the padd off the floor out of his roommate's way before it got crushed.

He still recalls poking at the screen blearily, trying to work out why there hadn't been a 'match found' chime to wake him up.

'No matches found,' the padd had chirped back at him.

Scotty had frowned. Surely with all the alien cultures encountered and catalogued by Starfleet and their allies... 

He had opened up the artwork, architecture, and all other ensign-accessible culture and information databases next and instructed the computer to run all of them for matches. Standing in the middle of a dorm late at night with a padd in hand wasn't the most memorable of moments, except for when it's the first time you consider the possibility that your soulmate is from a species that your own species hadn't even encountered yet.

He'd quickly dismissed the idea the first time, shaking his head in disgust - what was the bloody point of the damn things if you had no hope of meeting, after all?

Still, before he dropped into bed that night he found himself picking his padd back up and tapping out a message back home cancelling his plans to travel back over break. He also caught himself wondering whether maybe the problem was not limitations on the database, but with the accuracy of the algorithm.

Not that he had cared, of course. Scotty was always far more interested in nacelles than his impossibly perfect match.

But given a solid week or two of uninterrupted quiet time with an absent roommate, he'd been pretty sure he could improve the database search functions....

Years later that blasted dog disappeared during a transporter test. Suddenly, instead of working on a starship flying into unknown territory to meet new people, Scotty found himself with plenty of time to continue his perpetual manual search of new database entries submitted by others.

Not that there was much point. He knew the damn things inside and out already, and nothing new ever came close to a match.

He'd never thought he was all that interested in meeting his soulmate before Delta Vega. A little curious, yes, and enough so to do a little information searching. But nothing like the great lifelong laborious search he had watched people around him undertake. Yet to his great surprise he found himself thinking - fuck, now we'll never meet.

 

 

 

_One wrong thing Jaylah assumed about her mark_

She hadn't understood how long their journey would be when they first left their star system. Their planets history was full of stories about exploring the stars, but over the years they'd pulled back. Damaged by loss and war and surrounded by hostile or ambivalent neighbours, her people had retreated from wider space.

Eventually, it was unheard of to travel very far at all. A few still searched out the nearest settlements and traders, but that too was becoming increasingly rare. Only cargo runners ever heard whispers about new alien cultures, and even those whispers were shared quietly and usually quickly frowned upon by the listener.

But Jaylah listened attentively when her parents told her the story they'd themselves been told once of a far away people with strange, ridged heads and fearsome tempers. Of a sign that was stamped on some of their belongings. Supposedly it was small and compact, like Jaylah's path mark, and like nothing ever seen among their own people.

Her parents also explained what nobody had ever spoken of in front of her or the other children. That her people dreamed when they came of age. That she would one day be old enough to hear her words. 

They told her that the dreams meant path marks were only a broad guide, a sign for where and how to begin a journey and the important crossroads one might encounter before finding the person who would best help them fulfill their life's purpose. That it didn't matter that nobody knew how to follow her path mark because soon she would most likely dream true anyway; for once, hopefully, just like everyone else. 

That her dream would be of the first thing her intended would say to her, so that they might know each other when their paths crossed.

Jaylah doesn't know how long they travelled before they encountered the nebula. She remembers her parents agonising over whether to go through it, or around it. Remembers the careful stock taking of their dwindling food and water supplies, and the nervous charting of the safer of many unsafe paths through the debris. The relief they all felt when a habitable planet with plant and animal life and bodies of fresh water appeared on their ships sensors.

Nothing of their small flying home survived the crash for her to salvage. There were no records to find of stars or distances or the many different places she still vaguely recalls seeing glimpses of through the ship loading doors when they stopped for provisions. 

By the time they reach Altamid, she's only just old enough. Shortly after they were all captured she dreamt for the first time, just like her parents had promised. Except everything was silent. Strange faces gazed back at her, mouths moving, but she couldn't hear a thing.

The dreams returned the next night, and then the next, and then the next. Just as clear and just as silent.

She woke screaming every time.

After the bees and the death place, after their - her - escape, the dreams stop entirely. Sometimes she thought she was still too young, other times that she was too scared to hear them.

Then Jaylah had found her House, and she saw her path mark upon its wall.

Then she knew why there were no words waiting for her in her sleep.

Her intended must be long dead at Krall's hands. Like everybody eventually was on such a forsaken planet. 

Alone once more, she spends her days repairing her intended's home. It gives her the purpose she now supposes she was always meant to have. She teaches herself how to speak the language her intended would have spoken, and how to cry out in anger instead of fear. When she works out how to read their planetary records, she dreams of leaving in search of their planet instead of the home she no longer knows.

 

 

 

_One right thing Scotty learnt in his Intercultural Soulmarks: Abridged, Correspondence Course for Starfleet Officers_

Scotty scarcely believes his eyes when he reads the memo.

'Intercultural Soulmarks: Abridged will explore the varied appearance of alien soulmarks and unique ways in which different cultures utilise and interpret their marks-' starts the official summary. 

Scotty skips to the end, where the Captain has scrawled: All Senior Staff to do before next Starbase. Not my rule, don't blame me. Apparently there's been a spike in human Starfleet Officers assuming everybody has a name for a mark AND that it means a romantic match, which is dumb. Then we piss people off more often, which is also dumb. Just do it. No, Spock isn't exempt, don't try that as an excuse for not doing your homework kids. -K

His heart stutters and his eyes go back over and over the note. He hadn't- He never- How, _how_ could he have spent so many years in Starfleet without discussing soulmarks with his non-human colleagues? 

Scotty smacks himself in the forehead. Hard. He's an idiot, a complete moron of colossal proportions. 

Perhaps he has a platonic soulmate after all.

 

 

 

_One right thing Jaylah learnt in her Intercultural Soulmarks course at Starfleet_

When the instructor first describes human soulmarks, all Jaylah can think is that strange Federation Standard phrase she learnt at Yorktown: oh thank God. She still didn't know who this God was that she was meant to be thanking, or what they could have to do with path marks, but she thanked them anyway.

She's also not sure about this strange human notion of marks being about romantic compatibility. It seems strange and a little silly for a people who have developed warp technology, as do many human customs she's learnt about since arriving in their San Francisco do. Their music continues to be her favourite thing about them.

Jaylah didn't remember as much of her people's culture as she would like, but she remembered enough. Such as that any sensible species quickly realised that space travel was too full of risk to pin all of ones hopes for partnership on one individual. It was foolish. It was not the point of a path being marked on the body before birth.

Such a thing could only lead to a life full of hopelessness and loss.

But to have a name marked instead of a path, that is full of nothing but hope. Perhaps her lack of dreams need not matter, for if her intended is human - which seems likely, she has noticed there are many more human Starfleet officers than alien - then they will have her name. 

She won't need the words, for they will know her.

 

 

 

*

"What was that, Scotty? Scotty? Jeez-"

Scotty blinked, and Jim's very furrowed brow swam into view. He was holding up his hand in front of Scotty's nose and clicking his fingers sharply. And repeatedly.

"- what's in this stuff, anyway, are you even conscious there?"

"Oi, stop that," Scotty murmured and batted at the hand weakly. It felt a little like his heartbeat was taking up residence in his temple, and taking rhythm notes from the click of the Captain's fingers.

"Do you need me to call Bones? I should call Bones. What kind of shit do you have us drinking here, anyway, are you trying to kill us?"

Jim reached for Scotty's padd but Scotty refused to relinquish it. He might have gone from sitting on the floor to lying on the floor somewhat against his conscious will, but he was no fainting maiden to have things pried from his hands, no thank you sir.

"You can't have it," Scotty said, tightening his grip until his fingers throbbed along with his temple. "It's mine."

"I know it's yours," Jim replied amiably, still tugging, "and I promise to give it right back as soon as I've sent a message to sickbay."

"Aye, and what exactly are you going to write, anyway? Please come by Scotty's quarters when you read this, he smuggled strange alien booze on board and I think it's giving him spontaneous alcohol poisoning but there's probably no rush otherwise I'd have used the comm like a regular person?"

Jim squinted at him for a moment, until Scotty sighed and shoved at Jim's shoulder just hard enough to give him room to sit back up. 

"You're not even drunk, are you?" Jim finally ventured, still squinting.

"Not even a little bit, you idiot. I only had a sip! Although are you sure _you_ aren't the one drunk with a medical intervention plan like that?"

"Hey!"

"It wasn't the drink. It was this-" he waved the padd, "I got a new message from Jaylah in the last batch of transmissions from Earth, but this is the first chance I've had all day to open it."

Scotty took a long, slow sip of his... God, whatever this was it tasted bloody awful and-

"Scotty!"

"What?"

Jim stared a moment, and then shook his head and raised his hands in the universal Jim Kirk sign of _what gives and have you completely lost your damn mind why are you doing this to me?_

"I don't know 'what', Scotty," he finally says slowly, jaw looking a little clenched, "that's why I'm asking you."

"Oh," Scotty says, and looks helplessly down at his padd, then shrugs. "It's just... she signed her name, Captain!"

"She signed...."

Jim sighs noisily, rubs a hand across his forehand and then pinches the bridge of his nose while reaching for his comm.

"No, wait! I don't need Doctor McCoy in here sighing at me, either. I'm not drunk and I've not lost the plot, it's just, well. Look!"

Scotty shoves the padd into Jim's hand. 

"She got some idea from a culture class that always signing her name in Federation Standard was insulting to her people, so she's got them to integrate a visual copy of her name to her communications at the end instead of signing off like everyone else. It's in her first language, is the thing. And, well-"

Scotty tugs up his sleeve and thrusts his arm in front of Jim's face.

"-Well! You see! Do you see? Have I actually gone mad? Oh god, I have, it's not even a match at all is it, and here I am, just-"

"Mr Scott." Jim's voice is gentle but firm, very firm. It's his 'I'm your friendly Starfleet Captain here to make friends and influence people or hopefully at least beam back out alive' voice. 

Scotty's not often the recipient of that particular Captain voice, but it grinds him to a halt, as intended.

"Maybe you should be having this conversation with Jaylah, hmm?"

It throws him for a minute. It's not really an answer, at all. Jim's just smiling at him, looking between the padd and Scotty's arm repeatedly and smiling wider each time. He thinks....

He thinks Scotty needs to talk to Jaylah.

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I think we'll have to try this again another time," he says, jumping to his feet and hustling Jim up, too, and shoving him bodily towards the door. Jim squeaks a little in the process but Scotty makes a mental note not to mention it for fear of getting sent back to Delta Vega or at least embarrassed publicly in some way on the bridge. "Been lovely, definitely have to try it again soon."

Then with a whoosh he's alone in his quarters again, never-bunched sleeve bunched up and his padd in one hand and drink in the other. Blinking at the empty room, he throws back the rest of the alcohol absentmindedly and winces.

He's got an important video to make.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy fandom stocking day littlestclouds! I hope you like this, the idea just grabbed me and ran, so thank you for the delightful bunny. I hope you get a lovely stocking and this makes you smile.


End file.
